About

Thomas Hadden, IEng, is an engineer and applied AI researcher based in Northern Ireland. He works at the intersection of industrial automation, process control, and artificial intelligence - with a focus on making these technologies practical, safe, and useful in real operational environments.

Thomas is currently an Application Engineer at Park Automation, working within the Automation Department as a Siemens specialist, delivering advanced control system design and documentation, servo drive upgrades, and automation solutions for clients across water treatment, wastewater, and process industries. He works closely with integrators, end users, and Siemens technical teams to specify, validate, and commission systems that meet demanding requirements for reliability and long-term supportability.

Alongside his role at Park, Thomas is undertaking a part-time PhD at Ulster University. The research programme - AI-Driven Innovation in Industrial and Process Control Systems (AIPCon) - investigates how reinforcement learning and digital twin methodologies can be applied to real-world process control, with a particular emphasis on the gap between academic theory and industrial adoption. His research pays close attention to the practical constraints that most academic work overlooks: process non-linearities, sensor limitations, safety requirements, and integration with existing PLC-based control architectures.

Industrial Analytics & Automation (IA-2) is Thomas's independent research initiative, run outside his employed role. It is not a company in the traditional sense - it is a vehicle for research-led work that sits between industry and academia: testing ideas, running applied studies, and publishing findings that are grounded in real engineering problems.

Thomas's career began with a higher-level apprenticeship at Kilroot Power Station, working across high-voltage systems, fire detection upgrades, and industrial maintenance in a heavily regulated environment. From there he moved into food manufacturing at Moy Park, progressing from Electrical Maintenance Technician to Engineering Shift Manager, where he led a team of seven technicians, drove continuous improvement programmes, and headed an SAP Plant Maintenance implementation on that site. He then spent time as a contract Automation and Controls Engineer through IA-2, delivering production-critical automation projects in food manufacturing environments before joining Park Automation in 2023.

Academically, Thomas holds a BEng (Hons) in Mechatronic Engineering (First Class) and an MSc in Internet of Things (Distinction), both from Ulster University. He is a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET) and an Incorporated Engineer (IEng), working toward Chartered Engineer registration. He delivers an annual guest lecture on industrial control systems to BSc Mechatronics students at Ulster University, and has contributed to the PORTAS research project - a REPHRAIN-funded initiative using machine learning to detect indicators of human trafficking in online job advertisements.

The technical domains Thomas works across include: Siemens PLC and drive systems (S7-1200, S7-1500, S120, G120), electrical design and documentation using the EPLAN suite, industrial networking (SCALANCE, Profinet, Modbus), digital twin modelling (Simcenter Flomaster), reinforcement learning for control, computer vision and deep learning, condition-based monitoring, and process automation for water, wastewater, and food manufacturing environments.

This site exists to share that work - the projects, the research, and the practical thinking that connects AI to industry. If you are a business owner wondering where AI fits, an integrator looking for technical support, or a researcher interested in collaboration, Thomas is interested in that conversation.